WORLD ARCHAEOLOGYPub Date : 2021-10-20DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2021.2014948
C. Frieman, James Lewis
{"title":"Trickle down innovation? Creativity and innovation at the margins","authors":"C. Frieman, James Lewis","doi":"10.1080/00438243.2021.2014948","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2021.2014948","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper explores the entanglement of the innovation discourse with discourses of power. Innovation is a frequent topic of archaeological research, but its implications for how we understand flows of power between individuals, groups, and regions has seen little attention. Here, we argue that our innovation narratives often blindly reproduce hierarchical relations which place dynamic cores in positions of power over their more passive peripheries and margins. In doing so, they obscure the complex and creative processes which occur in these marginal zones. We illustrate this discussion with an exploration of southwestern Britain and the resilience of people living at the margins of the Roman world. We argue that more attentiveness to these creative margins allows us to challenge the flattening hierarchies embedded in traditional innovation narratives, creating space for more complex and multi-layered stories of past innovation.","PeriodicalId":47942,"journal":{"name":"WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY","volume":"53 1","pages":"723 - 740"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47270927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGYPub Date : 2021-10-20DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2021.1993987
Paula N. Doumani Dupuy, Elise Luneau, Lynne M. Rouse
{"title":"Pluralising power: ceramics and social differentiation in Bronze Age central Eurasia","authors":"Paula N. Doumani Dupuy, Elise Luneau, Lynne M. Rouse","doi":"10.1080/00438243.2021.1993987","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2021.1993987","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Archaeological research on Bronze Age central Eurasia often recognizes ‘exotic’ materials and practices as the outcome of migration and trans-regional exchange. In this analysis, we bring together two significant datasets that have long referred to one another but have rarely conversed analytically: ‘southern’ ceramics in northern central Eurasia and reciprocal ‘northern’ ceramics in southern Central Asia. Taking the amalgamation of technical traits and cultural affiliations in these ceramics as a starting point, we argue that ‘exotic’ wares were implicated across the region in diverse systems of social power reliant on differentiation. By comparing the social contexts of our northern and southern ceramic datasets, we identify variability in the signaling of ‘exoticness’ across subregions to alternately include or exclude groups. This discussion sets up a middle ground between overgeneralizing and under-hypothesizing the socio-cultural landscapes in Bronze Age central Eurasia, by prioritizing the role of ‘exotic’ technologies in choreographing dynamic social power.","PeriodicalId":47942,"journal":{"name":"WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY","volume":"53 1","pages":"779 - 808"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43741019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGYPub Date : 2021-10-20DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2021.2013307
A. Dolfini
{"title":"Warrior graves reconsidered: metal, power and identity in Copper Age Italy","authors":"A. Dolfini","doi":"10.1080/00438243.2021.2013307","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2021.2013307","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The article proposes a new interpretation of Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age warrior graves grounded in the ‘Rinaldone’ burial tradition of central Italy, 4th and 3rd millennia BC. In European archaeology, warrior graves are frequently thought to signal the rise of sociopolitical inequality rooted in metal wealth. The work questions the empirical and conceptual foundations of this reading, arguing that, in early Europe, copper was not as rare and valuable as it is often presumed to be; that metalworking did not demand uniquely complex skills; and that metal-rich burials cannot be interpreted in light of modernising ideas of identity. It is argued instead that the key to decoding prehistoric warrior graves lies in context-specific notions of gender, age, and the life course. In particular, life and death circumstances including violence (both inflicted and suffered) would determine why certain individuals were laid to rest with lavish weapon assemblages.","PeriodicalId":47942,"journal":{"name":"WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY","volume":"53 1","pages":"809 - 833"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42618779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGYPub Date : 2021-10-20DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2021.2021979
Yan Liu, Panpan Tan, Junchang Yang, Jian Ma
{"title":"Social agency and prestige technology: serial production of gold appliqués in the early Iron Age north-west China and the Eurasian steppes","authors":"Yan Liu, Panpan Tan, Junchang Yang, Jian Ma","doi":"10.1080/00438243.2021.2021979","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2021.2021979","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Recent discoveries in north-west China and the Central Asian steppes have shed new light on the study of power display and material connections amongst nomadic groups during the development of gold-making technology in Iron Age Eurasia. Bringing together material science and archaeological approaches, this paper presents an interdisciplinary study of serially produced gold artefacts recovered from the elite burials of north-west China, to gain a better understanding of the inventive nature of early gold-making industry. In particular, we find that the technology used to craft the gold appliqués found in the Xigou cemetery (3rd-2nd centuries BCE) in north-west China attested to the use of moulds or matrices for serial production, closely linked to technological practice of the central Asians steppes. We consider the spread of the peculiar technique and iconography as a tangible way to examine technology transfer and cultural interactions. The contextual analysis reveals that the mould-pressing technique, the animal-style gold artefacts, and the burial practice of using prestigious gold as body adornment constitute a shared set of material expressions of the status and power of nomadic elites in north-west China, Kazakhstan and southern Siberia. Technological practice, in turn, opens up new research avenues in the field, recalibrating our recognition and understanding the active involvement of material objects in human life and culture.","PeriodicalId":47942,"journal":{"name":"WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY","volume":"53 1","pages":"741 - 761"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43166548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGYPub Date : 2021-10-20DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2021.2014949
C. Costin
{"title":"Techno-aesthetic ceramic traditions and the effective communication of power on the North Coast of Peru","authors":"C. Costin","doi":"10.1080/00438243.2021.2014949","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2021.2014949","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine the relationship between technological and aesthetic shifts in Andean North Coast prestige ceramics and sociopolitical change by focusing on pottery as a form of information technology in a world without formal writing. To do so, I begin by defining two techno-aesthetic macro-traditions to emphasize the interconnections among technique and visual appearance, semantics and aesthetics. I then demonstrate how these two traditions waxed and waned in complementary fashion for millennia, and I set the shifts in their popularity within their broader sociopolitical contexts. In investigating technological choices and their concomitant visual qualities, I explore the interplay between technological, aesthetic, and sociopolitical transformations, with a focus on the changing role of ceramics as media for communicating ideological narratives of power and authority.","PeriodicalId":47942,"journal":{"name":"WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY","volume":"53 1","pages":"881 - 902"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46974371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGYPub Date : 2021-10-07DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2021.1972831
Alexander Aston
{"title":"You can’t perform the same ritual twice: minds, materials, automobiles, and the emergence of form","authors":"Alexander Aston","doi":"10.1080/00438243.2021.1972831","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2021.1972831","url":null,"abstract":"Following Gosden and Malafouris, this article explores why process archaeology provides a beneficial framework for understanding the emergent, selforganising dynamics of human existence. To demonstrate the potential of process archaeology for reframing discourses about humanity’s nature, this article examines automotive culture from evolutionary, ecological, developmental, and socio-political perspectives. Automobiles provide a robust example of how forms emerge from and transform flows of energy-matter across multiple dynamic scales. The article concludes with a reflection on symbolism and how American automotive culture can be understood as a form of cult ritual. Archaeology’s obsession with ritual stems from a Cartesian assumption that rituals are arbitrary manifestations of symbolic minds. Process archaeology understands ritual as a means of organising energetic flows of persons and things into stable forms that endure over time. This perspective supports exploring the emergence of symbolic relationships and cultural forms as a developmental entwining of cognitive and ecological processes.","PeriodicalId":47942,"journal":{"name":"WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47259542","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGYPub Date : 2021-08-23DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2021.1963833
O. Harris
{"title":"Archaeology, process and time: beyond history versus memory","authors":"O. Harris","doi":"10.1080/00438243.2021.1963833","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2021.1963833","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper I seek to explore how a particular aspect of process philosophy can offer us new ways of thinking through time in archaeology. In contrast to current archaeological debates, which cou...","PeriodicalId":47942,"journal":{"name":"WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49351957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGYPub Date : 2021-08-08DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2022.2032312
Piphal Heng
{"title":"Landscape, upland-lowland, community, and economy of the mekong river (6th-8th century CE): case studies from the Pre-Angkorian centers of Thala Borivat and Sambor","authors":"Piphal Heng","doi":"10.1080/00438243.2022.2032312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2022.2032312","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Southeast Asian archaeological research often emphasizes upland-lowland dynamics in the development of premodern complex societies. This paper tracks upland-lowland dynamics in Pre-Angkorian (6th-8th century CE) Cambodia by focusing on land-use and economy along the Mekong River. Proto-urban settlements emerged throughout the Tonle Sap and Mekong Delta alluvial plains but also appeared at key centers such as Thala Borivat, Sambor, and Wat Phu along the Mekong River’s more narrow corridors. The diversified economy that involved movement of forest resources and food between these tropical upland-lowland ecotones, observed during the colonial period, emerged by the 6th-7th centuries CE and coincided with political consolidations during the Pre-Angkor period. Analysis of this region suggests that non-Khmer (ethnic minority) swidden agricultural groups who now dominate the uplands have premodern roots in the region. Using upland-lowland settings to study tropical habitation, this archaeological study offers a risk-reduction exchange-based model for understanding Cambodia’s premodern Mekong organization.","PeriodicalId":47942,"journal":{"name":"WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY","volume":"53 1","pages":"643 - 666"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45792309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGYPub Date : 2021-08-08DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2021.1997638
Gyles Iannone, Scott Macrae, Talis Talving-Loza, Raiza S. Rivera, Pyiet Phyo Kyaw
{"title":"Finding the remains of classical Bagan’s peri-urban support population: using ethnoarchaeological data to enhance archaeological excavation and interpretation","authors":"Gyles Iannone, Scott Macrae, Talis Talving-Loza, Raiza S. Rivera, Pyiet Phyo Kyaw","doi":"10.1080/00438243.2021.1997638","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2021.1997638","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Little is known about the lifeways of the commoner populations that supported the expansive pre-industrial cities of Southeast Asia. Archaeologically driven understandings are constrained by the fact that the architecture and much of the material culture utilized by ordinary citizens were made from perishable materials, and many living floors were also raised above the actual ground surface on piles. The challenges associated with searching for and interpreting these quotidian remains, once they are found, can be mitigated to some degree through the integration of ethnoarchaeological insights. This study outlines the results of detailed ethnoarchaeological investigations within ten traditional Myanmar villages located in proximity to the remains of ‘classical’ Bagan’s walled and moated royal city. We then explore how these findings have helped our excavation team recognize and interpret a range of residential remains associated with the ancient city’s peri-urban support population.","PeriodicalId":47942,"journal":{"name":"WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY","volume":"53 1","pages":"579 - 598"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46452174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WORLD ARCHAEOLOGYPub Date : 2021-08-08DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2021.1997639
Verónica Zuccarelli Freire, P. Roberts, Ana S. Meléndez, M. Tromp, Marcos. N. Quesada
{"title":"Managing environmental diversity in the eastern foothills of the Andes: pre-Columbian agrarian landscapes in the El Alto-Ancasti mountain range","authors":"Verónica Zuccarelli Freire, P. Roberts, Ana S. Meléndez, M. Tromp, Marcos. N. Quesada","doi":"10.1080/00438243.2021.1997639","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2021.1997639","url":null,"abstract":"ABTRACT In this paper we review the growing evidence of anthropogenic landscapespresent in the semi-deciduous neotropical forest biomes of eastern NW Argentina,which have remained relatively neglected in favour of arid to semi-arid western Andean regions. The evidence gathered in de El Alto-Ancasti provides animportant case study where multidisciplinary methodologies have beenapplied to sites that document the emergence and variability in food productionstrategies across the eastern Andean forests and grasslands of NWArgentina. We discuss evidence offarming structures from archaeological surveys, plant management from phy-tolith analysis, and the tempo and nature of settlement from archaeological excavations undertaken at a variety of sites in the El Alto Ancasti mountainrange. We suggest that the communities that inhabited this region during thefirst millennium AD (ca. 1500–1000 BP) established a strategy of ‘overlappingpatchworks’ of food production that were able to contend with considerableseasonal variability. We argue that, through the use of cross-channelling, low river areas, erosion control techniques and the establishment of mesothermal crops,including maize, legumes, and tubers, throughout the region, these societies adopted flexible strategies to adapt to life in a region prone to climatic change","PeriodicalId":47942,"journal":{"name":"WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY","volume":"53 1","pages":"615 - 642"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41587088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}